Kivy Intro and Tutorial (GRDevDay 2013)

An introduction to Kivy including a tutorial to make an Android app.

Transcript

1. Kivy
   Multitouch for desktop and mobile with Python
   

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2. TL;DR
   ● Why Python on Android and for Android?
   ● What is Kivy?
   ● Kivy application showcase
   ● Make a desktop Kivy application
   ● Turn it into an Android app
   ● Edit Kivy app on Android
   ● More awesome Kivy tools
   

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3. Who am I?
   By day I am the reclusive entirety of the IT
   department for Van Dam Iron Works.
   By night I stalk the mean streets of Grand
   Rapids, Michigan as a serial user group
   organizer.
   I am Ben Rousch!
   

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4. Recap: Ben, WTF are you doing?
   ● Tablets are becoming more common.
   ● Some people only own a tablet.
   ● Some schools are handing out tablets.
   ● This is bad for learning to program.
   ( Rushkoff: Program or Be Programmed )
   

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5. Recap: How can we fix that?
   ● Let's program for on
   ● iOS is a lost cause. Too locked down.
   ● Let's program for Android on Android
   ○ AIDE - Android Java IDE
   ○ TerminalIDE
   ● But I don't like Java.
   ● I want to use Python!
   

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6. How to:
   Program for Android with Python
   ● Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A)
   ● android-python27
   

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7. How to:
   Program in Python on Android
   ● Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A)
   ● BotBrew for Android
   ● Linux on Android
   

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8. How to:
   Program in Python for Android on Android
   ● Scripting Layer for Android (SL4A)?
   ○ Clumsy project creation and usage
   ○ Device compatibility issues
   ○ Limited access to underlying Android
   ● Linux on Android?
   ○ No Android SDK for ARM
   ○ High resource demands
   ● android-python27 + AIDE?
   ○ Annoying Eclipse project to create
   ○ One person team
   ○ Device compatibility issues
   ○ Limited access to underlying Android
   ● Kivy!
   

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9. What is Kivy (Officially)?
   ● Open source
   ● Python library
   ● for rapid development of applications
   ● that make use of innovative user interfaces
   ● such as multi-touch apps
   

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10. What is Kivy (To Me)?
    ● Python
    ● GUI and application framework
    ● that works on all of my favorite platforms
    ● (also some other platforms),
    ● which can make Android apps
    ● testable on the desktop w/o the emulator,
    ● can be modified right on the device,
    ● and it's run by a mature and stable team.
    

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11. Kivy Showcase
    ● Yeco - A touch controller for Ableton Live
    ● kivyMaps - cross-platform maps with Kivy
    ● Particle Panda - particle effects generator
    ● NORBERT - ROBE Lighting showcase
    ● KiPyCalc - Programmable calculator
    ● Kivy Demo Site
    

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12. SayThis Tutorial
    ●
    ●
    

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13. Let's Make an Application
    1. Minimum app
    2. Add background image (missing)
    3. Really add background image
    4. Make background image fit window
    5. Add GUI elements
    6. Resize elements
    7. Adding padding and spacing
    8. Change font size
    9. Add popup action to button
    10. Add TTS capability
    11. Show inspector
    

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14. Let's Make it an Android App
    1. Install Python for Android
    2. Compile Python for Android
    3. Add Android resources (icon, splash screen)
    4. Compile APK
    5. Talk about pyjnius
    

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15. Pyjnius
    ● JNI wrapper
    ● to allow access to Java classes
    ● from Python
    

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16. Pyjnius Example
    

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17. Pyjnius in SayThis : Media Volume
    

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18. Pyjnius in SayThis : TTS
    

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19. Editing Kivy Apps on Android
    ● Kivy Launcher
    ○ Touchtracer
    ○ OnDeviceDemo
    ● Replace SayThis with OnDeviceDemo
    

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20. What's Left?
    ● Create Kivy app on Android
    ● Kivy-specific on-device IDE
    ● Version control: git
    ● Make it easier to build for all platforms
    ● Platform abstraction layer
    

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21. More Kivy Stuff Coming Soon
    ● Inspector: python main.py -m inspect
    ● Remote Python Shell on Android (pyjnius)
    ● Buildozer: create packages for all platforms
    ● Kivy Designer: WYSIWYG designer and IDE
    ● Plyer: platform abstraction layer
    

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22. Kivy Community
    ● Active IRC channel with core devs
    ● Programming Contest (done)
    ●
    RaspberryPi Bounty
    ●
    Python3 PSF Grant
    

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23. For More About Kivy
    Kivy Website
    Kivy Wiki
    Kivy on Github
    Kivy Users Google Group
    Kivy Development Google Group
    #kivy on Freenode (IRC)
    

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24. My Resources
    ● SayThis Tutorial Github Repo
    (grdevday2013 branch)
    

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